site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7565 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 26, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Why do people engage in culture war though? I mean in some cases it is necessary like literal wars or a group actively holding hostile views against another and opposes thier rights on the basis of prejudice. But much of the discourse I have seen is more about attacking the group and pulling down even normal members of the group ignoring that they are not some genocidal murderers. Even though they bear some responsibilities for their own group or country it ignores that normal people often avoid conflict rather than holding the same prejudiced beliefs themselves.

I don't really think culture war is the solution, because whether one side is right or wrong it ultimately makes a breeding ground for hatred and nobody here will be listening to the facts and work upon a solution. It is sort of like our race, color, wealth, institutions etc .. all make up our identity of who we are. Any attack on these are an attack on the person belonging to that said group (and I am not talking about criticism of the group). Will anyone sit to think about thier position? Of course not because human nature is reactionary and much of out actions are governed by feelings. It would be unrealistic to expect the person being attacked to be reasonable, especially if it is actively hostile. But it will lead to a never ending war with each other without any solutions.

Why do people engage in culture war though?

The 21st century escalation of the culture war is largely driven by social media. So a large part of the answer is "People engage in culture war because a small number of for-profit businesses show them that all the cool kids are engaging in culture war." Note show, not tell - social media algorithms curate your feed in a way which is optimised for engagement and ad revenue, and as part of that they are going to give you a potentially misleading impression of the kind of content your peers are posting.

Mark Zuckerberg burned the democratic commons in order to get people to click on more adverts. I actually believe this.

Mark Zuckerberg burned the democratic commons in order to get people to click on more adverts. I actually believe this.

He certainly wasn't alone in this: Reddit and Twitter also made out like bandits, and I'm probably forgetting a few.

But it did seem a bit inevitable: the seeds were already there. Skirmishes had been ongoing for decades, even, in public fora. The Internet was the modern industrialism to the Culture War's WWI. But lots of people were happy to get rich as arms dealers.

Also, how do we get the equivalent of a treaty of Westphalia, not Versailles?

Not commenting on you in either way but I think believing:

The 21st century escalation of the culture war is largely driven by social media

vs.

Social media made it impossible to continue suppressing non-approved perspectives

is the primary division that makes somebody either 'centrist' or 'populist/far-/alt-/whatever-you-want-to-call-it'.

Why do people engage in culture war though?

Because I think every side is wrong. We don't actually know how to organize society right now and need to figure it out. We also don't seem to be smart enough to figure it out theoretically, so we're stuck doing live cultural evolution. Liberalism is a loosening of cultural norms, and you can read two purposes to it. One is that it gives space for figuring things out when you have big changes in material circumstances, like mass literacy, the industrial revolution or social media. The other is that the lack of oppressive norms is an end in itself and the way to the good life. The first one makes sense, the second one is quite a bit iffier, but the second one is also a simpler idea and if things get vulgarized it's a tempting hole to fall into. Things seemed to work pretty well up until around 2010 when social media showed up and broke some invisible precondition for 20th century liberalism. The message then quickly morphed into one where we have figured things out, just don't be a dick, only bad people are disagreeing. We need to wind down this whole free speech nonsense since we know what's right and what's wrong already. Oh, and we're totally going to be explicitly racist from now on. I'm not buying this as the end of history, and I'm not sure the system would self-correct on its own.

Outside pressure will force the sides stay sharp, adapt to their terrain and come up with new ways to act, instead of everyone ending up chasing the same bureaucratically assigned goal and stagnating. The multipolar world also keeps bringing attention to the pain points of each faction, like Catholic sex abuse scandals, immigrant crime in Europe or the crippling lack of human capital in current US right wing, when the factions themselves would prefer to just suppress discussion of the matter and leave the problem to fester. I'm hoping that poking at these will eventually build up to a broader understanding of what works and what doesn't and what can be changed to improve things in the future.

Why do people engage in culture war though?

Because you may not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is interested in you. Consider the example of a male tech employee seeing the proposal being mooted that "any male tech employee accused of sexual harassment against a woman should simply be fired, because it will be easier on them to find a job than it would on the woman to deal with the investigation". Does this seem like a wise thing for him to simply let pass by?

Why do people engage in culture war though?

I can only speak for myself. But I (mostly) "wage" the culture war because I believe that culture actually matters, and, in fact it matters much more than many people in modern society would like to admit. There are a lot of people who are libertarians (and those to the left of them), who essentially think nothing but GDP and economic growth, and taxes matter, and that cultural/societal norms are largely arbitrary. What these people don't understand is that culture effects economics, (and the inverse is also true: economics affects culture).

A small scale example of this is the job market: the best and easiest way to get hired at a job is via nepotism: aka a friend or family member recommends you to the boss or hiring manager, and your resume gets pulled through, you get interviewed, and then hired. This is effective because the hiring manager has some background information on you, that he doesn't have about random applicants online. But increasingly, people are becoming more isolated, and are having less friendships. We often here a lot about college grads having a hardtime finding a job, but we are also (Im speaking for me, Im gen-z) far less likely to have close friends than previous generations. If we had more connections it would probably help us get in the door faster and easier.

A large scale example is declining birthrates: an arguably cultural change that will and is already having massive implications. As populations age, we need more people to pay for retirement, and also fill jobs in the increasingly large healthcare sector. (Fun fact: healthcare is what is having the largest job growth!). We are running out of people, which is having large economic effect on socially safety net and healthcare systems.

Point is, the general idea that culture "doesnt matter" or is arbitrary is absurd. Lifestyles matter, and Im a firm believer that there is a heiarchy, to quote Charles Murray in his interview with Ronald Bailey via ReasonTV.

Charles Murray: If you say that satisfactions in life, deep satisfactions in life come from one of four domains, something I've been arguing for years—they come from family, community, vocation, and faith. You don't have to tap into all four; there are happy atheists, there are happy single people. But if you don't tap into those domains, you better have a really satisfying vocation, for example, or you better have a really satisfying community life.

Okay, what I'm describing in the new lower class are increasing numbers of people who aren't married, they aren't working, they've fallen away from religion, and they are isolated. They're living in their communities isolated from any interaction with other people. Those people are living lives that have been stripped of a great deal of the stuff of life. All right, I don't consider that argument to be nostalgic. I say that is grounded in a great deal of our understanding, both in terms of classic Aristotelian discussions of what it means to be a human being and also modern empirical psychology and sociology. I'm making the statement: this is a human tragedy.

Ronald Bailey: And yet I get the impression that if you gave them the offer, "You could go back to 1960," they would also be like you, not want to go. They'd go kicking and screaming.

Charles Murray: Yeah, yeah. The reason that they aren't going to go back to 1960—part of them are exactly the same reasons I'm not going to, okay? All right, in terms of the creature comforts and the rest of it. The other part of it is that the most impoverished part of all is they don't know there is anything better out there. We have kept that information carefully to ourselves.

If people are watching, take away anything, I wish they would take away this: it is non-judgmentalism run amok to say that the person I just described—unmarried, not working, no religion, no community—to say, "Well, these are his choices, and perhaps in his own way he's just as happy as I am, that doesn't apply to you," is a form of cruelty. And public policy cannot address this form of cruelty. We have to address it by a deep introspection into what we most deeply believe about the sources of satisfaction in a human life. And how do we transmit that? We live it openly, and we don't make it easy for people to live miserable lives.

Note: Murray is talking specifically about the lower class, but much of this is affecting all economic classes. It simply happens to impact the lower class the most.

Of course, All I've said, you can probably guess which side of this war I'm biased towards. But I'm more or less convinced that the conservative positions on these issues are better overall than anything I've seen in more liberal and progressive circles.

isn't this just behavioral psychology? But one thing that stands out is how the most inconsequential things generate the most fervent debate: the ballroom, cheesecake factory , renaming AI to SI , etc. These are tiny stakes but captivate the media, distracting from more impotent things. Culture wars tend to involve things which have low stakes but are highly partisan in nature. I guess that is what separates it from actual war.

Because for twenty years, there has been one stable replacement fertility rate in a developed country- partisan republicans. That's why SEC and pop country became fashionable over the late 2010's, because the percentage of teenagers embracing republican culture started rising precipitously.

So the great replacement is real- the blue tribe is being replaced by the red tribe. But both are, for now, essentially cultural identities. The head of the Texas GOP is a red tribe Indian American- he's a Christian convert who likes to wear cowboy hats and thinks high schoolers should be well-rounded instead of test scores minmaxers. And obviously blue tribe non-whites are a dime a dozen. So blue tribe values need to be imposed as a means of counteracting the demographic advantage, because the blue tribe is close-ish to an elite group. Otherwise the blue tribe will die out; once the teens and young adults are supermajority red(which does not necessarily entail hard right morality) then all the blue offspring will defect, because they want to hang out with their bros, they want peers. Like in premodern societies the culture war is essentially zero sum- the reds are defending their own offspring from blue tribe values being imposed by the government, yes, but the blues are doing this to defend their own offspring from the imposition of red tribe values by their peer environments.

I think honestly it’s a bit of narcissism. Not that having an opinion on culture issues is wrong or bad, but if you’re “waging war” about it, it’s in some form or other about the human desire to get their own way and if possible to force it on other people.

Why would it matter to a person living in California what people in Idaho think about trans issues? Why do they care? It doesn’t affect them that conservative Baptists don’t want their kids to be trans. They lose no rights in California. Why would someone in Idaho care that Californians want their kids to be trans? It’s about control and the prevention of control. I want everyone to agree with me, therefore I wage culture wars and try to get the power to force everyone to agree with me.

It's a form of self-expression, to make the world a bit more compatible with your values, and/or to find similar people. Lazy activism is what substack posters, internet commenters, and other "culture warriors" (like me, I guess) do.

Why so nasty? Some of it is certainly hatred, sadism, and grifting for attention. But also, the world is a cruel place, so some cruelty is required to protect yourself and those you love; it’s hard to express kindness without appearing weak and cringe, especially in politics. Still, at the end of the day it is self-expression, and it influences the world by its appearance not intention; so I can’t escape the feeling nastiness should be minimized to what’s necessary, under evidence that is constantly rechecked.

The simple correct answer is evolution.

Nature has always been at war with itself to evolve. Culture war is no different than any other kind of war. Those who win war get more resources for their offspring to ensure they survive and replicate themselves.

The big tribe is the successful tribe, and the successful tribe is good for its members. The culture war is fundamentally about trying to offset the red tribe fertility advantage.

Why do people wage the culture war? Because they believe the politics are important and they care a lot.

Why do people engage here? To discuss topics relevant to the culture war in a forum that prohibits straight up waging it, and to test their opinions among people who are banned from participating on the mainstream internet. Or at least that is mostly why I post here. Overall this also serves as a space for people to share their controversial viewpoints. I am sure some are just here to hang out.

For sure, Reddit and other social media censor candid discussions about this stuff

I mean in some cases it is necessary like literal wars or a group actively holding hostile views against another and opposes thier rights on the basis of prejudice.

Interesting choice of exceptions that makes me think your first post here is not entirely in good faith or high effort.

Culture war is here because sizable minority of people wizened up on exactly how destructive entryism is, how many slippery slopes were even slipperier and because the culture they were growing up with was under attack and destroyed at any step.

Interesting choice of exceptions that makes me think your first post here is not entirely in good faith or high effort.

Yeah, I get the feeling that this person (wittingly or unwittingly) has chosen a side in the culture war and is perplexed as to why the other side is not simply rolling over.

I'm speculating a bit, but I would guess that according to this individual (1) for one side, it's necessary and appropriate to participate in the culture war in order to "fight prejudice,"; but (2) the other side is being silly given that nobody is actually trying to genocide them. It reminds me of progressives who seriously accuse conservatives of being obsessed with race.

That being said, I admit I'm pretty sensitive on this issue and I see the word "prejudice" as a huge red flag. I think "prejudice" is one of those strategically ambiguous social justice buzzwords with a meaning that can jump back and forth between motte and bailey. Anyway, perhaps the poster will elucidate. I have asked a clarifying question down-thread.

I would guess OP is not a native speaker of American English, and in that case likely has a different context for 'prejudice' than the way it's used in Anglo-American political arguments.

It helps to have some background:

Zunger:

Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats. It means that we accept that people may be different from us, in their customs, in their behavior, in their dress, in their sex lives, and that if this doesn’t directly affect our lives, it is none of our business. But the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms. It is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact...

...No side, after all, will ever accept a peace in which their most basic needs are not satisfied — their safety, and their power to ensure that safety, most of all. The desire for justice is a desire that we each have such mechanisms to protect ourselves, while still remaining in the context of peace: that the rule of law, for example, will provide us remedy for breaches without having to entirely abandon all peace. Any “peace” which does not satisfy this basic requirement, one which creates an existential threat to one side or the other, can never hold.

Ozy:

And yet, fundamentally… it’s not true that conservatives as a group are working for the same goals as I am but simply have different ideas of how to pursue it. It’s not true that conservatives simply think that lowering taxes will stimulate the economy or that economic growth works better than foreign aid to help the global poor or that, as regrettable as it is for gay couples who long for children, children will be severely traumatized unless they are raised by heterosexuals. I would certainly prefer it to be that way. I want to have respect for all belief systems; I want to believe we’re all working for the same goals but simply disagree on certain facts.

But my read of the psychological evidence is that, from my value system, about half the country is evil and it is in my self-interest to shame the expression of their values, indoctrinate their children, and work for a future where their values are no longer represented on this Earth.

Scott:

I thought I’d be done with this story in a night. Instead it’s taken me two weeks, all the way up until Halloween – perfect night for a ghost story, right? I’ve been alternately drinking and smoking weed, trying to calm myself down enough to think about anything other than the third Scissor statement. No, that’s not right, definitely trying not to think about either of the first two Scissor statements, because if I think about them, I might start thinking about how some people disagree with them, and then I’m gone. Three times I’ve started to call my ex-girlfriend to ask her where she is, and if I ever go through with it and she answers me, I don’t know what I will do to her. But it isn’t just her. Fifty percent of the population disagrees with me on the third-highest-ranked Scissor statement. I don’t know who they are. I haven’t really appreciated that fact. Not really. I can’t imagine it being anyone I know. They’re too decent. But I can’t be sure it isn’t. So I drink.

You guys, who haven’t heard a really bad Scissor statement yet and don’t know what it’s like – it’s easy for you to say “don’t let it manipulate you” or “we need a hard and fast policy of not letting ourselves fight over Scissor statements”. But how do you know you’re not in the wrong? How do you know there’s not an issue out there where, if you knew it, you would agree it would be better to just nuke the world and let us start over again from the sewer mutants, rather than let the sort of people who would support it continue to pollute the world with their presence? How do you know that you’re not like the schoolkid who superciliously says “Nothing is bad enough to deserve a swear word” when the worst that’s ever happened to her is dropping her lollipop in the dirt. If that schoolkid gets kidnapped and tortured, does she change her mind? If she can’t describe the torture to her schoolmates, but just says “a really bad thing happened to me”, and they still insist nothing could be bad enough to justify using swear words, who do you side with? Then why are you still thinking I’m “damaged” when I tell you I’ve seen the Scissor statement, and charity and compassion and unity can fuck off and die? Some last remnant of outside-view morality keeps me from writing the whole list here and letting you all exterminate yourselves.

Spider Jerusalem:

So you vote for television and everyone else, as far as your eye can see, votes to fuck you with switchblades. That's voting. You're welcome.

So.

I mean in some cases it is necessary like literal wars or a group actively holding hostile views against another and opposes thier rights on the basis of prejudice.

"rights" is not a coherent concept. "prejudice" is a Russell conjugation.

Humans organize themselves by the values they hold. Many values humans can hold are mutually incompatible. When you trap humans with incompatible values in a space together and force them to compete for resources, the result is escalating conflict until they find a way to segregate themselves by values again. Values can drift over time if sufficient values-homogeneity is not enforced; a homogenous group can build high-complexity society built on cooperation, and then values-drift into incompatible values that make it impossible to maintain that high-complexity society as more and more value drains into zero-sum or negative-sum competition with the outgroup.

Our society was previously values-coherent enough to function. It no longer is, so its complexity and stored value are being cannibalized to compensate: culture war. When there's not enough complexity and stored value to cannibalize, we will transition to actual war. The alternatives are separation, which no one knows how to do, and re-alignment, which no one knows how to do and which neither side is willing to accept.

None of this is irrational or a mistake. This is what humans do. Any and all of us could fix it in an instant: just accept losing. None of us are willing to do that. We do this because this is, after careful deliberation, what we want to do.

Well, partially its people being Conflict theorists rather than mistake theorists.. If you believe your opponents' ideas are immutable to some degree, you wage war on the idea and the people who harbor it, rather than attempt persuasion.

"Culture War" is what it looks like to battle an idea/memeplex/egregore and (attempt to) eradicate it so it no longer competes with your preferred idea.

Its also people being averse to actual war, which is the method by which ideas are really put to the test. We're wealthy enough these days that it would suck to have to fight in an actual kinetic conflict, yet there are still ways to 'steal' wealth from your enemies (or neighbors) without their consent, and divide up the pie in ways that don't trigger a physically violent response. If you can make your enemies hand over wealth without having to fight them or risking your physical wellbeing in any way, you might find this quite appealing.

And at the end of the day, evolution has endowed people with the 'ingroup bias' (my tribe is the best and strongest around!) and they can draw their definition of ingroup along lines of race/color, wealth/class, or shared culture/ideology. So you wage culture war so as to fit in with your ingroup by proving to be a loyal soldier, and hopefully get compensated or rewarded for your efforts, so you can get in on the aforementioned wealth confiscation by giving all the right ingroup signals off, which means visibly participating in culture war.

If you want to be entitled to the 'spoils,' you gotta at least wear the uniform.

Why do people engage in culture war though? I mean in some cases it is necessary like literal wars or a group actively holding hostile views against another and opposes thier rights on the basis of prejudice. But much of the discourse I have seen is more about attacking the group and pulling down even normal members of the group ignoring that they are not some genocidal murderers

I'm not sure I understand your point here. Let's suppose there is a group which is hostile to mine. It's very unlikely that it will come down to actual mass murder against my group but they still want to push for laws and norms which will significantly disadvantage my group. They are still fomenting hate against my group. In your view, would you say it's necessary and/or appropriate for me to respond?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats